How to Raise Startup Funding From Angel Investors & Venture Capitalists and Win New Clients

03/15/2012

How to Create a Brutally Simple Pitch

As communication channels increase along with the speed of doing business, the ability to pitch your startup in one sentence, becomes critical. This applies equally to both sales and investor pitches.

Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs are so immersed in the minutiae of their business, that they forget the importance of communicating clearly and simply to an audience who is being exposed to their idea for the first time.

Many years ago I hired global ad agency M & C Saatchi to help a startup I was advising. Their philosophy is ‘Brutal Simplicity of Thought’ and is clearly a key to their success. Their rationale is that simple ideas enter the brain easier and stay there longer.

A concise one liner is easier to remember and easier to share with others.

There are two approaches to pitching your startup in one sentence. The first is to create a ‘high concept pitch’. Alienwas pitched to studio executives as ‘Jaws in Space’. As is true of all ‘less is more’ approaches, creating an effective and impactful high concept pitch takes time but is worth the effort.

An alternative approach is to use the following formula:

My company [company name]

Has developed / is developing [product / service]

That solves the problem [define problem]

For [target market]

So an example might be

Acme has developed an app that delivers a light electric shock via a smart phone, that solves the problem of investor attention disorder, faced by entrepreneurs raising capital.

Whichever approach you use, if you want to be heard, understood and remembered, make sure that an effective one sentence pitch forms part of your pitching arsenal.

Martin is the author of 'Here's the Pitch - How to Pitch Your Business to Anyone, Get Funded and Win New Clients' available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all leading booksellers.